Scenes of Ashton under Lyne (1901)

Ashton-Under-Lyne
1901
Silent
3m

Aspects of the Lancashire market town, with policemen, small girls, dogs and passers-by.

This collection of apparently random 'scenes' begins on the Ashton-under-Lyne Town Hall steps (identifiable by its famous Corinthian columns), apparently capturing a civic occasion. Policemen and, later, well-dressed dignitaries stride in formation. In the streets, as passers-by react to the camera, a man can be seen displaying a placard: "THESE PICTURES SHOWN ODDFELLOWS HALL MONDAY NEXT".

Street Life

Pavements thronging, traffic pressed nose to bumper (or tail): these astonishing films show Edwardian streets buzzing with life.

'Street scenes' were a staple of early filmmaking, and Mitchell & Kenyon's are particularly stunning, revealing in sharp detail how our ancestors behaved, dressed and moved in public, as well as how their towns and cities were organised.

These streets throng with human and other traffic. Motor cars were still a rarity, but the tide of vehicles never let up: horse-drawn carts, bicycles, omnibuses and trams (some of them electrified). They may miss the sounds and smells of the city, but these extraordinary images evoke a rapidly changing society: an urbanised, increasingly mobile, consumer Britain not so very different from our own.